Ollie got up. Mrs. Greening hastened to her to offer the support of her motherly arm.
“I think I’ll go upstairs,” said the young widow.
“Yes, you do,” counseled Mrs. Greening. “They’ll be along with the wagons purty soon, and we’ll have to git 169 ready to go. I think they must have the grave done by now.”
The women watched Ollie as she went uncertainly to the stairs and faltered as she climbed upward, shaking their heads forebodingly. Sol and Judge Little went outside together and stood talking by the door.
“Ain’t it terrible!” said one woman.
“Scan’lous!” agreed the other.
Mrs. Greening shook her fist toward the parlor.
“Old sneaky, slinkin’, miserly Isom!” she denounced. “I always felt that he was the kind of a man to do a trick like that. Shootin’ was too good for him–he orto been hung!”
In her room upstairs Ollie, while entirely unaware of Mrs. Greening’s vehement arraignment of Isom, bitterly indorsed it in her heart. She sat on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; tears trickled between her fingers.
Perhaps Isom had a son, unknown to anybody there. There was that period out of his life when he was at business college in St. Louis. No one knew what had taken place in that time. Perhaps he had a son. If so, they would oust her, turn her out as poor as she came, with the memory of that hard year of servitude in her heart and nothing to compensate for it, not even a tender recollection. How much better if Joe had not come between her and Curtis Morgan that night–what night, how long ago was it now?–how much kinder and happier for her indeed?